“Just Robb, please, and Elara can tell you the coordinates,” he replied as two militiamen carried a struggling Erik onto the ship, and they followed the guard captain inside.

Di

Memories warred in his head.

Of Siege, the nefarious captain of the Dossier, and Marigold, the daughter of Duchessa Aragon. A woman with hellfire hair and a girl with a smile for trouble. He hesitated as he faced her, unsure of what to do—of what to say. The last time he saw her, he was D09 in this new, strange body, and now he was Dmitri in the same body, but with the knowledge that it had been made for him. He longed for a moment without emotions—without the bubbling fizz of anxiety and the heavy weight of guilt—and all he could do was twist his fingers and look away.

Until she took him by the face and made him look at her.

Marigold and Siege, childhood friend and starship captain.

“Captain,” he greeted her carefully.

“Metalhead,” she replied, and let go of his chin. Her hair simmered like a slow-burning bonfire, crackling like the question in her eyes. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find the right words—but how do you explain to someone who thought you’ve been dead for twenty years that you were alive? And had been right under her nose? The words didn’t seem to want to come.

Because while she was twenty years wiser, he was still that lost teenage boy who had sold his soul to the Great Dark.

But then the captain drew her arms around him and pulled him tightly into a hug. She burrowed her face into his hair and murmured, “Welcome home.”

Home.

After so long, after all those months with that cold, red song in his head. The word home felt too large, and he too small and too undeserving. He curled his fingers into the back of Siege’s coat as the dam he had built up cracked, and all the emotions came pouring out. A sob escaped his lips, even though he could not cry. He was home, and yet he had betrayed it.

He had almost killed Ana.

But he never would again—that he would make sure of.

Ana

The Dossier reached Haven’s Grave a few hours later. It was a graveyard of sorts, halfway between Cerces and Iliad, where derelict ships congregated through some strange cosmic magnitism, and in the center of the graveyard was a waystation only a few knew about. It was where the captain had asked for her fleetships to meet, because she had called in all of her favors. She had never so much as called in one before.

Not many merchants traveled through Haven’s Grave, not many mercenaries camped there, and not many outlaws lived there. It simply existed as a respite, like Xourix at the edge of the asteroid belt. There were already three ships there by the time the Dossier docked. Two of them Ana didn’t recognize, but the third she knew well—it was an Ironblood ship, the crest of the Wysteria family.